Muslims Seen ‘Threat’ to America

OnIslam & Newspapers

The Tea Party is notorious for hostility against Muslims. (File photo)

Tea Party, Muslims, threat, America, Qur'an

CAIRO – In the latest Islamophobic campaigns against the sizable minority, an American populist, conservative movement believes that all Muslims poses a threat to the United States because they abide by the teachings of Islam and the Noble Qur’an and that Muslims should not take any position in the federal government.

“Have you ever read the Quran? I suggest you do so, because anyone that is a Muslim is a threat to this country, and that’s a fact,” Wes Harris, the founder and chairman of the Original North Phoenix Tea Party, told the Arizona Capitol Times.

Harris, who is also a precinct committeeman in the Legislative District 6 Republican Committee, believes that Muslims’ loyalty to the US is questionable because they follow the Qur’an.

“If they are Muslim they have to follow the Qur’an. That’s their religion and that’s their doctrine,” he said, describing Islam as a “more a fascist type of organization.”

The Tea Party movement is a populist conservative social movement in the United States.

It emerged through a series of coordinated nationwide protests against policies of US President Barack Obama.

The movement’s name was coined after the Boston Tea Party, a 1773 incident when colonists destroyed British tea rather than paying a tax that violated their right to "No Taxation without Representation."

The movement has shown hostility against the Muslim community in the United States.

Last month, Tea Party candidate for Minnesota state representative Cindy Pugh compared Muslim women and children to garbage bags.

In 2010, Judson Philips, a Tea Party official, stirred a storm for suggesting that Congressman Keith Ellison was not fit to serve because he is a Muslim.

Ellison was elected in 2006 and became America’s first Muslim member of Congress.

Islamophobic

The Tea Party officials also opened fire on defenders of a Muslim aide to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, saying Muslims should not work in the federal government.

“Is she a Muslim? Is she an active Muslim?” Harris said.

“I rest my case. That’s all she needs to be.”

Huma Abedin, a close aide to Clinton, has been under fire from Republicans on claims of having links with the Muslim Brotherhood.

Republican representative Michele Bachmann has said that the appointment of Abedin, a Muslim, in the State Department was a sign of the Brotherhood’s infiltration of the Obama administration.

But the accusations drew fire from US lawmakers and activists as the latest sign of growing Islamophobia in the United States.

Republican Senator John McCain also rose up to the defense of Abedin, describing the accusations as “illogical and baseless”.

But Harris hit out at McCain, saying he will take out a recall petition against the Republican senator.

“He (McCain) just took Michele Bachmann over the coals on the floor of the Senate for her warning about the infiltration of the Muslim Brotherhood into our government,” Harris said.

“It’s just one of many things. It culminates in this latest debacle.”

Since 9/11, Muslims, estimated between six to seven million, have become sensitized to an erosion of their civil rights, with a prevailing belief that America was stigmatizing their faith.

Anti-Muslim sentiments sharply grew in the United States over plans to build a mosque near the 9/11 site in New York, resulting in attacks on Muslims and their property.

A recent report by the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) and the University of California said that Islamophobia is on the rise in the US.

A US survey has also revealed that the majority of Americans know very little about Muslims and their faith.

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